TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – U.S. Magistrate-Western Pennsylvania District Judge Robert Colville’s Aug. 3 sentencing of Robert Bowers to death by legal injection for killing 12 people in an Oct. 27, 2018 synagogue attack was met with mixed feelings by at least two victims with Newark roots.
Judge Colville’s acting on a jury’s recommendation went against the wishes of some of the members of Tree of Life, Dor Hadash and New Light congregations whom Bowers tried to exterminate with an AR-15 assault rifle.
Miri Rabinowitz, in 2019, wrote to then U.S. Attorney Bill Barr to pursue a life in prison sentence. The wife of the late Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz said that seeking the death penalty went against “Dr. Jerry’s moral beliefs.”
Jerry Rabinowitz, before he earned his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, attended the Maple Avenue School 1956-65 before he and his family moved to Springfield. Rabinowitz was Dor Hadash’s temple president when Bowers burst in at the start of Sabbath services.
Tree of Life Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, in 2020, seemed to be resigned to federal prosecutors’ death penalty drive. “My beliefs,” he said, “doesn’t appear to be part of their mix.”
Myers, also a Newark native, was a 15-year-old cantor at his congregation. Myers left Newark with a Rutgers Bachelor’s degree to attain a Jewish history degree from New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary.
Myers was barely rabbi for a year when Bowers attacked TOL and the two other tenant congregations. He was wounded while escorting as many people out of the sanctuary.
Man who killed former city native, wounder of Newark-schooled rabbi sentenced to death by Pittsburgh jury. Man’s family, rabbi have divergent views on the death penalty.
IRVINGTON – Irviungtonians will be soon seeing why the now-retired Municipal Clerk Harold Wiener expressed his confidence in his successor, Shawna Supel.
Supel, said Wiener, had joined the clerk’s office as a computer operator in 2001 and had been promoted and certified while gaining experience. She had developed a computer database program that tracked ordinances, resolutions and contracts that is still in use.
Supel, like Wiener, is a native Irvingtonian. The Irvington High School Class of 1996 graduate had been promoted from Berkeley Terrace Elementary School and Myrtle Avenue/University Middle School. She and her parents still live here.
When Supel came aboard the Municipal Building in 2001, she came with an associate’s degree in computer science and information systems from Union County College. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in the same from Kean University in 2005.
Supel was officially sworn in as Municipal Clerk at the Township Council’s July 10 meeting, starting a 21-day office transition period. Wiener, after 35 years, turned his keys over to her on July 31.
EAST ORANGE – The pain of losing two mothers, their son and daughter and their pilot-doctor in a July 2 South Carolina private plane crash has lingered here, in North Caldwell-Little Falls and in Jamaica.
Tanique Cheu, 32, her son Sean Gardner, 7, Suzette Colman-Edwards, 42 and her daughter Odaycia Edwards, 17, died with Dr. Joseph Farense, 66, all died after the Piper PA-32R-300 lost altitude and crashed onto a golf course access road in North Myrtle Beach, S.C. 11:20 a.m. July 2.
Dr. Farense, who had an internal medicine practice in Little Falls, was also an accomplished pilot who liked to take friends with him to his NMB condo unit on weekends.
Chiu was a Thomas Edison State College nursing student who was taking son Gardner for a vacation up north. Colman-Edwards, herself a medical worker, was taking daughter Odaycia for a similar holiday.
A preliminary federal NYSB report said that the single-engine Piper took off from Grand Strand Airport slowly and gradually taking altitude at 11:02 a.m. It veered to the right for 1 5 seconds before its right wing stalled at 11:18 a.m. It crashed and burned on a golf course access road.
An airport worker said that Dr. Farense, on his June 30 arrival from Caldwell’s Essex County Airport, asked him to “top-off” the Piper’s fuel tank.
No funeral arrangements were disclosed for the four passengers; Gardner was anticipated to be at Sept. 2’s first day of school at Seaford, Jamaica. Dr. Farense’s memorial service was held at Little Falls’ Gaita Funeral Home July 9.
ORANGE – Those attending or watching the next Orange City Council meeting, scheduled for 7 p.m. Sept. 5, should not be surprised that members of the 765 Vose Ave. Tenants Association appear to decry their “unlivable” conditions – unless repairs have been meanwhile made.
One speaker had spoken out before the council during their Aug. 2 meeting – eight days before tenants at 765 Vose brought in a local television news crew to document some of the conditions.
The aired video recording included two partially collapsed ceilings – one of which, said a tenant, had fallen on her daughter while she was taking a shower. The body of a mouse on a hardwood floor was also seen in a corner of a room.
The group has posted on 765 Vose’s front windows notices that the building is “Unlivable” and to notify the management group.
765 Vose, in the South Ward, is a three-story 48-unit condominium building owned since 2017 by Vose Equities LLC of Hackensack and Brooklyn. It looks much like any other mid-20th Century Modern apartment building found elsewhere in Orange except, when viewed from the NJTransit M&E right of way, has a long drained swimming pool and a dilapidated storage shed.
There is a new five-story apartment building under construction on the same block.
Neither Vose Equities nor its management firm have publicly responded to queries.
WEST ORANGE – Mayor Susan McCartney and the Township Council did bid farewell to a long-standing member of its Law Department – Kenneth Kayser – at their July 31 meeting.
Kayser, of the St. Cloud section, had decided to end his 25-year run in the department earlier in July. McCartney responded by proclaiming July 31 as “Ken Kayser Day” and holding a small recognition ceremony that Monday night meeting.
Kayser and his family first came to the Redwood section by way of New York City and Nutley. The Brooklyn native and Princeton High School graduate got his Seton Hall Law School degree in 1977 while working in the Essex County’s Planning and Economic Development.
Kayser, who was an ECPO assistant prosecutor and, in 1989-96, legislative counsel for the Orange City Council, had his own Livingston legal practice when township elders appointed him in 1998. He was hired about the same time as they had Richard D. Trenk as Township Attorney.
McCartney and the Township Council are at odds over whether or how to fire Trenk the last six months. The council, in their original legislation to halt paying Trenk and his own legal firm for serving West Orange, had named Kayser as his successor.
Kayser, who is retiring with his wife to Florida’s Amelia Island, leaves behind a vacancy that the township, as of Aug. 15, has not posted.
SOUTH ORANGE – The death of Edward Lloyd, Esq. is being felt here in the village as well as environmental law centers in Newark and New York City and in New Jersey’s Pinelands.
Lloyd, 74, who died Aug. 6, founded and ran Rutgers-Newark Environmental Law Center before founding Columbia Law School’s Environmental Law Clinic. Professor Emeritus Lloyd was a 20-year member of the New Jersey Pineland Commission as of August.
Counselor Lloyd, here, was husband to Janine G. Bauer who is also an environmental lawyer. He encouraged her time as South Orange Trustee (2009-13), on the village’s planning board (1999-2007, 2009) and appointment to the then-Essex County Board of Freeholders (2018). He also supported her run for Village President which she lost by 18 votes.
Lloyd was father to son Alexander, 34 and daughter Abigail, 28. Lloyd and Bauer had moved here around 35 years ago to raise them.
Lloyd came here by way of Princeton University, where he attained a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1970. He was a fan of the Princeton men’s basketball team in part because his father was also a Tigers player. He received his Juris Doctorate from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1973.
No funeral or memorial arrangements have been announced here as of Aug. 15.
MAPLEWOOD – A Brooklyn man has remained in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility since his July 28 arrest in a township park on luring and child endangerment charges.
Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stepehens II and Maplewood Police Chief Albert Sally said that Nazarjon Abdukahorov, 27, is being held on a second-degree count of luring or enticing a child by various means and third-degree endangerment sexual contact with a child.
Stephens and Sally, in their Aug. 5 press release, said that Maplewood’s detective bureau was tipped off of an adult exchanging messages with a 14-year-old township girl who met on a dating app.
Those messages had advanced to where the subject and the girl were going to meet at an in-town park for sexual activity. MPD detectives then called ECPO’s Special Victims Unit.
Township and county detectives staked out the said meeting place until the suspect, later identified as Abdulkahorov, arrived on time. He was promptly arrested and processed.
BLOOMFIELD – A township man and former Newark police officer is serving a five-year prison sentence as a result of striking a pedestrian while drunk on the Garden State Parkway here in 2021 and briefly bringing the victim’s body to his home.
Superior Court Judge (Newark) Ronald D. Wigler sentenced Louis Santiago, 26, to five years’ imprisonment plus three years of parole supervision. Santiago had previously pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and DWI in striking the late Damian Dymka, 26, of Garfield.
Santiago had confessed to driving on the GSP northbound right shoulder when he struck pedestrian Dymka near Exit 151 at 3 a.m. Nov. 1, 2001. He and passenger cousin Albert Guzman. Instead of calling 911 and staying at the scene, “returned to the scene multiple times” before loading Dymka’s body into 2005 Honda Accord and driving to Santiago’s home.
Santiago, at home, told his parents. While Santiago’s mother and Guzman “allegedly discussed what to do with the body,” father and retired NPD Lt. Luis Santiago, instead of promptly calling 911, drove over to the collision site and stayed there for 40 minutes until his son arrived.
A responding State Police officer had arrived to interview both Santiagos until he noticed Dymka in the Honda’s back seat. Father Santiago had meanwhile made what turned out to be “misleading statements.”
Judge Wigler sentenced the elder Santiago to two years probation for the misleading statements and fir obstructing the administration of law. Neither Santiago will ever hold any public employment or office.
Guzman, who was facing a conspiracy to hinder an investigation charge, was admitted to the Pre-Trial Intervention program. Santiago’s mother was not charged.
MONTCLAIR – Observers of Montclair’s government are hoping that Michael Lapolla’s stint as the latest Interim Town Manager will run smoother than his appointment process.
Deputy Mayor William “Bill” Hurlock and fellow Council Members David Cummings and Robert “Bob” Russo, for example, may bring up their complaints over a lack of sufficient notification lead time of a 2:30 p.m. Aug. 1 emergency meeting that immediately appointed Lapolla at their 7 p.m. Aug. 15 regular meeting.
Mayor Sean Spillar, who began notifying the council at 1::30 p.m. was joined by Council Members Lori Price Abrams, Peter Yacobellis and Robin Schlager in activating Lapolla. Montclair’s elders had learned that the then-interim manager, Thomas Hartnett, had died July 31.
Cummings and Ruso may also bring up the July 25 special meeting – where the same four elders had approved hiring Lapolla to succeed Hartnett on Aug. 14 – as a further lack of appointment transparency.
The two council members, on July 25, cited what they saw as a conflict of interest in having Hartnett’s company, Government Services Group, recommend Lapolla. Cummings and Ruso then walked out of that meeting. (Hurlock was absent.)
The council had hired Hartnett, for $1 a week, and GSG to succeed Acting Brian Scantlebury July 18. Hartnett himself, on July 25, had acknowledged the GSG conflict and “had told (interim) Township Attorney Paul Burr about it.”
Lapolla is the third interim or acting manager since the council fired Town Manager Timothy Stafford May 28. The 1996-2003 Union County Manager is to be paid $10,000 a month. The search for a permanent manager is to take four months.
BELLEVILLE – Superintendent of Schools Dr. Richard Tomko, as of Sept. 1, will be receiving more than his fifth straight renewed contract from the Belleville Board of Education Trustees.
Dr. Tomko, who was first hired in 2015, will have an annual salary that will top out at $255,384.84 for the 2027-28 school year. That comes out to a $12,500 increase over his 2022-23 $242,842 salary.
The $12,500 increase will be made in annual installments: 2.55 percent for 2024-25 and 2025-26 plus 3.6 percent 2026-27 and 3.0 percent for 2027-28.
Dr. Tomko, on one hand will not be reimbursed for any new job-related classes he may be taking. He will be rewarded for earning his recent doctorate degree in education with a $2,500 annual stipend for 23-24, 24-25 and 25-26 and a $3,200 annual stipend for 26-27 and 27-28.
The BOE Trustees present unanimously approved Dr. Tomko’s contract at their July 31 meeting. Trustee Tracy Williams abstained, and Trustee Nicole Daddis was absent.
